scheme of the universe, in which he starts with the proposition, that
God is infinitely above all obligations of any kind to his creatures.
Edwards replies with the brusque comment,--"This is wrong; God has no
more right to injure a creature than a creature has to injure God"; and
each probably about that time preached a sermon on his own views, which
was discussed by every farmer, in intervals of plough and hoe, by every
woman and girl, at loom, spinning-wheel, or wash-tub. New England was
one vast sea, surging from depths to heights with thought and discussion
on the most insoluble of mysteries. And it is to be added, that no man
or woman accepted any theory or speculation simply _as_ theory or
speculation; all was profoundly real and vital,--a foundation on which
actual life was based with intensest earnestness.

The views of human existence which resulted from this course of training
were gloomy enough to oppress any heart which did not rise above them by
triumphant faith or sink below them by brutish insensibility; for they
included every moral problem of natural or revealed religion, divested
of all those softening poetries and tender draperies which forms,
ceremonies, and rituals had thrown around them in other parts and ages
of Christendom. The human race, without exception, coming into existence
"under God's wrath and curse," with a nature so fatally disordered,
that, although perfect free agents, men were infallibly certain to do
nothing to Divine acceptance until regenerated by the supernatural aid
of God's Spirit,--this aid being given only to a certain decreed number
of the human race, the rest, with enough free agency to make them
responsible, but without this indispensable assistance exposed to the
malignant assaults of evil spirits versed in every art of temptation,
were sure to fall hopelessly into perdition. The standard of what
constituted a true regeneration, as presented in such treatises as
Edwards on the Affections, and others of the times, made this change to